How does Vivian Bearing’s experience support Nuland’s ideas about how our cultural conceptions surrounding the “beautiful death” cause so many people to die alone?
The purpose of this paper is to apply your understanding of these topics to the movie Wit (2001), which features the story of an English professor, Vivian Bearing, who is diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer. Bearing describes her experiences as a cancer patient and offers her reactions to various health communication interactions during her diagnosis and treatment. You can access the entire movie.Carefully watch the movie and answer the following questions, using evidence from the texts to support your ideas:
How does Vivian Bearing’s experience of social support influence her illness experience?
How do Vivian Bearing’s experiences with health care providers support the well-documented trends in patient-provider communication (e.g., physician-centered communication, asymmetrical versus transactional communication, etc.)?
What evidence do you see that both Vivian Bearing and her healthcare providers have been socialized to use the Voice of the Lifeworld and/or the Voice of Medicine? Does anyone in the movie deviate from the patient and/or health care provider role expectations and if so, how?
How does Vivian Bearing’s experience support Nuland’s ideas about how our cultural conceptions surrounding the “beautiful death” cause so many people to die alone?